Using Twitter to transform a business into a reputed brand

The more revolutionary your communication technique, greater is its impact. Twitter is tailor-made example of a communication tool that is personal, professional, fun and functional all at the same time. Twitter founder and former CEO Evan Williams has claimed:

• The website adds 1.8 million members per week
• In two years the number of registered users has grown from 3 million to 165 million
• Twitter will reach the one billion members mark someday just like Facebook

There is no doubt therefore that Twitter is not a phenomenon to be ignored while chalking out your marketing strategies. Use it to transform your business into a brand. Here’s how:

Create your social identity: Aside from your corporate identity, let your prospective customers know you have a social identity too. It is easy to establish one-on-on communication with your clients or colleagues because they know you as Mr X or Ms Y rather than Mr CEO or Ms MD. Don’t blatantly market your brand; market yourself as a credible Twitter user rather. Choose tweet updates that will be useful to the person reading it, instead of promotional tweets that advertise.

Converse, contemplate, and change: In the real world, your clients can’t reach you to give their feedback nor can you approach them asking for any. Twittersphere simplifies this process. For example, if you want to know what corporate gifts are preferred by customers, all you have to do is tweet a query about it.

Usually you have to wait for the evaluation of product or a service till it is used but with Twitter you can mull over business ideas with the very people who stand to benefit from them. The feedback you get on a particular topic can stimulate a discussion and snow-ball into a client-friendly decision.

Consumer becomes the communicator: Why blow your own trumpet when your client can do it for you! Your clients can help you promote your brand by Re-tweeting your posts for others in their forum to see. While your tweet about how great your brand is will be viewed as unabashed advertising, your client’s Re-tweet about the same will hold greater value. Why? Because his status as a consumer gives an impression that he is promoting the product sincerely because he has genuinely benefited from it and not because he has a personal agenda.